


on my heart just like a tattoo

by simonewrites



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gen, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Reader-Insert, Soulmark AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-12-02 22:02:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11518374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simonewrites/pseuds/simonewrites
Summary: (i'll always have you)A collection of soulmark AU fics for the MCU, mostly under 2k. I want to get good at writing shorter stuff again and I love this trope. The first time I write about each character, it'll be their meeting. Since I like storylines, there'll probably be continuations. I'll make sure to make it clear at the beginning of each chapter!





	1. smack! (bucky barnes)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so into this silly trope. It's one of my favorites, actually. This first chapter is Bucky, because he comes to me the most naturally, but trust me when I say that there's more to come. What'll probably end up happening is that I'll come up with two separate storylines, one for Peter Parker and one for Bucky, and they'll alternate. Sigh.
> 
> Title comes from Tattoo by Jordin Sparks.

You were born with a soulmark, on your left upper arm, but the doctors took one look at it and knew it was  _ wrong.  _ Something God-awful must have been happening to your soulmate, because it grayed itself out and darkened back to normal at random. The handwriting was old-fashioned, looping neatly over your skin, and the words were too damn common: “It was my fault, doll.” Even as a kid, you knew your parents worried every time the color changed. 

The strangeness of your mark meant that scientists studied you all throughout your childhood, trying to figure out some kind of pattern, anything to come up with an explanation for why it behaved the way it did. You stopped letting them when you turned fourteen and your best friend met their soulmate. By then, you’d already convinced yourself that it was a lost cause, and it would be better to just forget about it. High school passed with your mark still doing that color-changing dance, and it was all you could do to bury yourself in your schoolwork during college. Everyone around you had linked up with their soulmate, or, at least, it felt like it.

\---

Around the time that Captain America was thrown from the helicarrier and nearly died, your mark darkened, and it didn’t gray out again. That filled you with a little bit of hope, because it meant that your soulmate wasn’t enduring whatever made your mark go gray anymore. It was also terrifying, because that meant that you had a decent chance of meeting them now, and you weren’t sure you wanted to. 

When your best friend from college, rolling in her daddy’s money and very generous with others, proposed that the two of you take a trip to New York, you didn’t refuse. How could you? That city was the stuff of dreams, with stores you’d never even heard of and buildings taller than you’d ever seen and foods you only knew about from pictures on the internet. She’d even managed to wheedle her way into a tour of the Avengers’ Tower, since her father and Tony Stark were old friends from college. You were most excited about that part, if you were honest: Stark had technology most people couldn’t even dream of, and the chance of running into an Avenger or two kept you jittery the entire subway ride on the morning of your visit. 

The Tower was even taller in person, and it was humbling to be standing in front of it and craning your neck back to have a chance at seeing the top. Your friend yanked you inside, her eyes sparkling as she flounced up to the receptionist, dropped her name, and then leaned over the counter as the woman behind the desk made a call. 

Finally,  _ finally,  _ a man came down to meet the two of you, and when your friend skipped up to him and sang, “Thank you again for letting us see the Tower, Tony!”, you froze. It was one thing to tour the Tower, but another thing entirely to tour the Tower with the man who  _ built  _ it. 

So you snapped your mouth shut and followed the two of them into the elevator, which went up and up and up and up until it reached the eighty-fifth floor, which, Tony informed you, was the main living floor of the Avengers. When you stepped off into the space, you were amazed. It was modern without feeling stuffy, and everything in that room was more expensive than a year’s worth of your rent.

You’d managed to space out while Tony explained his AI to your friend, and then what felt like a wall smacked into your face. 

“Oh, God, I’m so sorry!” You jumped back, hands up in surrender. The person who had just walked into you was a very tall, very muscular man with piercing blue eyes and dark hair that fell just short of his broad shoulders. You couldn’t look away from him, clad in a long-sleeved shirt and jeans, but very much barefoot. His left hand was shiny silver metal, and then it hit you. The former Winter Soldier had just bumped right into you. 

He still seemed to be in shock, his flesh hand coming up to touch the back of his neck, but he shook his head and said, “It was my fault, doll.” 

You gasped and your right hand flew to your upper arm, where those words were imprinted. They were tingling, almost, this pins-and-needles feeling that you’d never felt before. 

“It’s you.” He whispered, his face disbelieving. “I didn’t think I had a soulmate because my mark didn’t show up… before.” 

“I’ve had mine since I was born. There’s never been another one.” 

He extended his hand, the right one, and when you didn’t flinch, he curled his fingers underneath your jaw and stroked his thumb over your cheekbone. 

“Do you know what I’ve done?” The tone of his voice was remorseful, ashamed, and your heart shattered in your chest. 

“Yes. I don’t care.” 

At that, he let his hand drop and wrapped both arms around you, squeezing you tightly. 

“I’m Bucky.” He murmured into your hair, and you rested your face on his chest, listening to the beat of his heart, which grounded you.  _ This is real,  _ it told you. 

“Y/N.” You replied. 

Your intimate movie moment was interrupted by golf-clapping from the other side of the room. When you wiggled out of Bucky’s hold and turned around, Tony was smirking, with your best friend agog next to him. 

“Nice one, Queen Elsa. Your soulmate lives hundreds of miles from here.” 

Bucky’s eyes were panicked when he looked down at you, but you placed your hand on his shoulder. 

“My job has provisions for this. I’ll transfer if you want me to stay up here so we can get to know each other.” 

He nodded, “I’d like that.”

And when Bucky ran gentle fingers over your soulmark later that night, hidden beneath the sleeve of your shirt, you just  _ knew  _ that everything would work out.


	2. train boy (peter parker)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's your first day of school in New York and you lock eyes with the cutest boy you've ever seen, who, excitingly, goes to your school. You've prayed that he's your soulmate, but you don't know and you're too afraid to find out, so he makes the first move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I LOVE PETER PARKER. Sorry, just had to get that off my chest. Anyways, this is just a cute lil fluffy thing (a meet cute, really) involving Peter meeting his soulmate. I can't stand to write him as a stuttering-every-word nervous wreck, but I snuck a little bit of that in because he's an awkward soul. I just feel like knowing that someone was his soulmate would make him a _little_ smoother. Hope you enjoy  <3

New York is the biggest city in the United States, and it’s a far cry from your hometown. You want to hate it here, want to dislike the culture and the hustle and bustle and change of scenery, but you _can’t._ Everything is bright and new and fresh-feeling, including the heaviness of the humidity that hangs in the air.

So your first thought when you see this boy on the subway, with the brownest brown eyes you’ve ever seen and tousled, wavy brown hair and a shy smile is _They don’t make them like that back home._ Then you register his hoodie, printed with the seal of your new high school, Midtown, and your heart sings. He has his headphones in, though, and that’s a universal sign for “Don’t talk to me,” so you just slip your own headphones into your ears and pray to God that you see him around.

\---

And you do see him around, but it’s fleeting, glances of him in the hallway with his head down and books cradled tight to his chest. You imagine what it would be like to hear his voice, to know him. It’s stupid to have a crush on a boy you’ve made eye contact with on a train once, especially when you know your soulmate is out there and you could meet them at any second, but you’ve never been good at listening to your brain.

And you pass nearly two months like that, watching the boy from afar and writing him little love letters in your journal, daydreaming about his smile and wondering if his hair is as soft as it looks. When he actually approaches you after school one day, you can’t think of anything to say, and you bolt. He calls out to you, though, and your knees damn near buckle when you hear his voice.

“Wait up, I- I wanted to talk to you!”

Your right ankle sizzles pleasantly. You know exactly what that is, know now that the messy handwriting there belongs to the cutie with eyes the color of a Hershey’s Special Dark bar, and you drop everything you’re holding in shock.

“Holy shit, train boy’s the one.” It spills from your lips before you can stop yourself, and his eyes light up in recognition. The grin on his face looks like it might hurt, it’s so big, and he kneels in front of you to help you gather your things. You hold your arms out so he can start to pile books in them, but it feels like your whole body is frozen and you can’t move to help him.

“Nice to meet you finally. I’m, uh, Peter. Peter Parker.” He’s holding your journal then, placing it on top of the stack, and you finally snap out of your trance.

“God, I’m such a mess. I’m Y/N, and I can’t lie, I’ve honestly been hoping it was you.”

The sparkle in his eyes turns soft, and he stands up. “Is it cheesy to say that I thought the same thing? I remember you from the train.”

To your horror, when you start talking, you can’t stop. “Obviously, I remember you, too. That was my first day here. When I saw you wearing a Midtown hoodie, I had hoped, since I felt this weird pull towards you, but _I_ didn’t want to be weird, so I just... watched from afar, which I guess is also weird.”

Peter’s smile grows as he listens to you, and he eventually places a hand on your shoulder.

“You’re really cute when you’re flustered. Do you maybe wanna go get a slice of pizza and talk?”

You can feel a grin tugging on the corners of your mouth, and you reply, “Let me go get my backpack and I’m game. Hope you know somewhere good.”

“Psh, I’ve lived in Queens my entire life. I know _every_ good pizza place.”

Right then, you know that you’re going to fall in love with Peter Parker, probably so fast that it’s scary.

\---

“So, where’s yours?” Peter asks, his mouth full of pizza.

“Gross, chew with your mouth shut! Anyways, it’s on my right ankle. What about yours?” You wrinkle your nose at him, and he gives you a sloppy, pizza-sauce-stained grin.

“My left wrist. ‘Holy shit, train boy’s the one.’ God, I was embarrassed about it as a kid.” He shakes his head, the smile still on his face, and you blush hotly.

“In my defense, I really wasn’t expecting it to be you, and I sure as hell wasn’t thinking about what I was saying.”

Your heart is so full, being here with him and knowing that he _is_ as sweet as you’d hoped. Smarter than you thought you deserved, too, and far cuter than you’d expected, even with tomato sauce all over his face.

“Evidently.” Peter teases, then wipes his mouth with a napkin and tosses it onto his empty plate. You finish the last few bites of your slice of pizza and wipe your own mouth before stacking the plates and tossing them in the garbage can not far from your booth. He’s right behind you, and you return to your seat to grab your backpack before heading out the door.

“I can walk you home, if you want.” The uncertainty on his face is heartbreaking, and you want to wipe it off and make sure he never feels it again.

“Only if you hold my hand.” You wink, and he blinks at you like he’s shocked.

“Um, y-yeah, sounds good!”

So you twine your fingers with his, noting that his hand is bigger than you first thought, and start to walk in the direction of your apartment building. He's keeping up with you easily; you can hear the way he's starting to loosen up again, changing the topic to Star Wars, and he feels just like home. You can't wait to see where this goes, can't wait to know him better than he knows himself, and if  _this_ is what finding your soulmate is like, then you can't begrudge the system anything. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on [Tumblr.](http://simonewrites.tumblr.com)

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [Tumblr.](http://simonewrites.tumblr.com)


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